A/N: Wow, it's been forever since I updated, and now that I have, it's a Christmas piece. In the middle of January. Blame Nanowrimo ('08 winner, represent!), school holidays, and the fact that I now own all four seasons of House on DVD, which ate my soul. Anyway, this was originally written for metamorphic_moon on lj, but I didn't get a chance to finish before I went on holidays, so I'm posting it now. Consider it my (fashionably) late gift to the masses...

Analogies

I hated Christmas parties. Absolutely abhorred them, especially when you were the only one left in the corner while all of your friends danced with attractive men under the mistletoe… or when you were expected to cook and clean.

"Tonks, can you pass me that plate?" Remus asked, interrupting my happy attempts at loathing. I leaned over to grab it, but my hands were slippery with butter, and it fell to the floor, shattering into several pieces. Damn. I'd done so well until now, and we'd been cooking for at least the last three hours.

"Nice work," Remus observed dryly, his face deadpan – whatever that expression even means. "I haven't seen such an impressive display of broken china since Neville Longbottom came to me two years ago to tell me about his run in with Trelawney after her broke a couple of her teacups. Best way to shatter a boy's confidence I've ever seen, short of locking him in a room with Severus." The corners of his lips rose upwards in a slight smile, and he stifled a giggle at a memory he obviously wasn't going to share with me.

"The old hag. She always used to scare the crap out of me," I agreed, glaring at him.

Men who tried to be funny were a hoot until you moved in with them and they made a mockery of every little aspect of your life from your addiction to Muggle soap operas to the way you made a cup of tea. Not that I was planning to move in with Remus, or anything. Of course not…

That was blasphemy, idiocy of the kind I had not been able to achieve since my years of Auror training, when I was plastered every night and miraculously able to dance while intoxicated without falling over. It was such a shame coherency and balance weren't skills I could keep around Remus, who took every opportunity to laugh at me.

"I'd guess we'd better pick this up. I don't think staring at a shattered plate quite constitutes Molly's idea of making the trifle. Bloody Christmas party traditions." He stooped over slightly and swept some of the mess up with his wand, directing it into the garbage, where it fell with a crash. "She'll be in here any minute," Remus said finally, throwing me a packet of sponge cake, before wincing as he realised what sort of damage that could do in my clumsy hands.

"For your information, Mister," I hissed, catching sight of his horrified face in the mirror that hung over the kitchen sink, "I am not as clumsy as you like to think. That bloody umbrella stand in the hallway is just in an awkward position."

"I'm sure," Remus replied. I couldn't quite believe he was going to give up that easily, what with that famous Marauder "reputation" and all – even if I hadn't seen much of it beyond his ability to equal the twins in a round of "Knock Knock" jokes. "Try explaining that to Molly when she's standing knee deep in crumbs and custard and wants to know what happened to dessert."

Ah, Molly. The love of my socially inadequate life. It was thanks to her that I spent half my life holed up in kitchens and toilets with Remus, arm deep in chores. Not that I resented the opportunity to spend time with Remus, or anything, but there were some things that couldn't been seen as romantic in any context, and cleaning toilets and cutting up carrots – even with magic – were among them.

Sometimes I thought she was out to torture me for all those times I'd corrupted Charlie as a little kid, as though it was my fault he preferred dragons to girls. But then I saw her glance between Remus and me and throw what she thought were subtle winks to Kingsley, and I couldn't help but love her.

Not that it was helping much. Remus seemed to enjoy working in silence, throwing me the occasional scowl when I burst into Christmas carols. If Charles Dickens had been a wizard, he would have renamed Scrooge Remus, and made sure that Christmas Eve didn't fall on the night of the full moon. The only time he talked was when he asked me to hand him something or sample his latest masterpiece. I couldn't quite tell if it was an aversion to social niceties or just to me, but considering the way he acted around Sirius and Kingsley, I was sure it was the latter.

"Why do we have to make trifle?" I complained, just to get Remus talking. He seemed to enjoy laughing a lot – mostly at me – but I couldn't think of any Marauder-worthy jokes that Sirius hadn't been telling since the beginning of time. "Can't we just make plum pudding or Christmas cake – chuck everything in the pot and let magic and heat do the rest?"

"Apparently Christmas cake is a labour of love, Tonks. Molly wouldn't let just anyone create such a masterpiece."

"Well isn't she just hilarious," I snapped, my temper getting the best of me. I'd been labeled "The Hogwarts Gab" by my Head of House too many times to count, and yet my best attempt at conversation still resulted in nothing more than Remus laughing at me. It was getting ridiculous. If I could bloody change my face so easily, why couldn't I just morph so there was a big sign stretched across my forehead in neon ink that said "I love Remus Lupin".

Because that would probably scare him away forever. Not to mention the fact that it would make me Sirius' favourite person to mock for the rest of his life… or at least however long he had left before the alcohol poisoned his liver. Self-destruction was only pretty in novels, and watching Sirius slowly fade away was horrible. I had to thank Remus for keeping him anchored to reality… for now, at least.

"Tonks, if she let you make it, we'd have sultanas plastered to the roof somehow." Great.

"Maybe you should plaster your tongue to the roof of your mouth until you can be nice." I threw a hand over my mouth as soon as I said it. Feisty, Tonks. Feisty. But most probably not attractive…

"I do know a useful spell that will do something similar if you have gum– used it on Peeves once." His mouth twitched as it formed yet another smile, and I wondered why he was opening up now. Christmas was supposed to be a time of giving, and all I got from him was a lukewarm response and a Christmas card, and he'd given one of those to every member of the Order.

"Why don't you use it then?"

"Because Lily used that line that every time Sirius annoyed her to death, and in the end she still grew to love him. It's a pretty pointless threat." Remus was somewhat wistful as he thought of Lily and James, of all the memories before that… that rat took them away. The same thoughts had eaten away at Sirius for twelve years in Azkaban, but sometimes, he still looked like he was coping better than Remus. They both wore their sadness in the scars upon their eyes, and sometimes I wished I'd known them twenty years ago… when they were happy.

"Well, I'm not Lily, am I? Although, if you like…" I tweaked my nose a little, and he let out a small grin.

"No thanks. I'm sure I can remember exactly what Lily looks like after the amount of time James spent reciting poems about her vivacious beauty."
"Really?"
"Yeah," Remus laughed, his grin spreading a bit wider as he abandoned the custard, stepping into the middle of the kitchen. "It was kind of like this:

"Lily, the beautiful flower of my eye, I love you with all my heart. Please never leave me, or I will feel the need to hurt myself in certain anatomical parts using my broom. Love always, James." He spun wildly around the kitchen, his arms outstretched and flailing, and I couldn't help laughing. If there was a second candidate for the ballet-dancing hall of shame after me, it had to be Remus. He was hopeless. Pathetic. Ridiculous. And absolutely hilarious.

"He thought that he was brilliant, the Shakespeare of the twentieth century. Sirius and I thought that the only way poetry could sink any lower would be if Snape serenaded a goat." I still couldn't control my giggling at that. Once, my friend Marina and I had been forced to bleach our minds after a very similar thought, considering Snape's attraction to mentioning bezoars in class whenever possible.

Great minds think alike is such a cliché, but what could I say? Remus and I were bloody meant for each other like Lily and James and Dumbledore and omniscience and Sirius and his stupid damn cheesecake addiction. He just needed to realise it…

"You're telling Tonks about that?" Speak of the cheesecake-eating devil. All we needed was Fred and George to come home for Christmas and the chaos would be complete.

"Yeah. Lily loved you in the end, just like Tonks will grow to love me – or at least deal with me." I was still lost because he was talking, really talking and -

"Like I need help with that."

Foot, meet mouth. On a scale from one to ten, I was soaring past the stars in the idiocy stakes, and they were an awful lot higher than the lopsided, plastic one on the Christmas tree.

"You…you what?" Normally I would have made a sarcastic comment about him being speechless, but even a floor covered in glass and seventeen consecutive renditions of "Rudolph" hadn't help him open up much. It didn't seem to matter what I said, getting Remus to talk to me the way that he talked to Sirius and the rest of the Order was impossible.

"Yeah." Not that it seemed I was much better at being coherent right now, anyway…

"You… you like me?"

"Yeah."

"But-"

Sirius stepped in as I raised a hand to slap myself, twisting my arm until it turned a purplish colour I hadn't chosen of my own accord.

"Bloody hell, Remus," he said exasperatedly. "To put this in Christmas terms, she's the cradle to your Jesus dude or whoever the Muggles believe in, the wrapping paper to your present, the… the bloody kiss to your mistletoe." He paused, tapping his chin with a spindly, harrowed finger. "Why does that sound vaguely like a painful sexual disease?"

Remus glanced at his watch. "You do know we only have fifteen minutes until Molly comes back to check on us, and Tonks, we still have to make a whole plate those Christmas tree shaped biscuits."

I declared my bloody love for the man, and all he could do was talk about biscuits? Christmas tree shaped biscuits? Bloody hell, all he needed now was a bottle of Firewhiskey and full access to the remote control and he'd be a stereotypical man in all but his monthly condition. Not that I was biased after always having to whisk the remote away while Dad watched Star Trek, or anything…

"My cousin tells you she wants to kiss you, shag you, probably marry you and have kids with you and die with you, and you bring up bloody biscuits. Some Marauder you are, Remus."

Thank you. Thank you.

All those times I said I hated Sirius… I took them back, at least until next time he got bored and decides to meddle with my love life, at least. At least he knew how to get to the point, even if I wasn't too impressed with his use of the word "shagging".

"What?" Remus and I gasped at the same time. "I- I… Sirius, what the hell are you talking about?"

Sirius laughed. "The sexual tension between you two is thicker than a good slice of Molly's plum pudding. Shame it's obvious to the whole Order except you."
"Don't be ridiculous, Sirius. If I fancied Tonks, surely I would have done something about it by now." He paused, gave me a quizzical stare, turned back to Sirius. Great. A man whose facial expressions left me even more confused. I thought he probably didn't like me and was just apologizing for Sirius' behaviour– his breath smelt like rich, like liquor, but he always acted like this, sober or drunk. Either the man was a single-minded annoying machine or he was stupid enough to actually believe that Remus might like someone like me.

"No you wouldn't, Moony. You're about as good with girls as a Skrewt is with respecting the idea that people actually like their fingers not smelling like roasting meat."

"What's with you and the obscure analogies today?"

"I think what he's trying to say, Remus, is… is that I really do like you, and apparently you like me too but have the confidence of an eleven year old on their first day at Hogwarts."

"Bloody hell! Not you too…"

"What, are you afraid Sirius might be right?" I hated myself as soon as I'd said it – my forward nature had worked on the men I'd dated in the past, but Remus wasn't like them, not at all.

"Yes… and no."

"Would a little elaboration be too much to ask for? I'd hate for you to stop talking now, when you've done so much of it in the past."

"Sarcasm doesn't become you, Tonks."

He was so ridiculously infuriating, and the annoying thing was, I couldn't help but love him for it. I was an Auror, a woman of strength and integrity and I was being ruined by a man who not only happened to be a werewolf, but was also going grey. If Moody found out…

"The thing is, Tonks… I'm not meant to be with you. I'm too -" I cut him off with a laugh, raising a finger and pressing it to his lips; they felt oddly smooth under my touch.

"You're the last person I expected to believe in anything other than fate," I said, before inwardly cursing myself. The man had been bitten by a werewolf for no apparent reason, so why I shouldn't expect it of him? If I was honest with myself, it had something to do with the fact that I could never believe in fate – I'd spent too much time in various detentions learning about the consequences of my actions for that – so I didn't like to believe that anyone else could either.

"It's not fate Tonks, it's reality." Behind me, Sirius snorted, but I tuned him out. I may have owed him for the fact that Remus and I were talking about our relationship, but that didn't mean I liked him being privy to every part of my personal life. It was going to be bad enough when Molly found out, especially if we ended up doing something ridiculously embarrassing like kissing under the mistletoe.

Actually, I'd probably be too wrapped up in the moment to care, but still…

"I don't want it – but you know about my… my furry little secret, -" he threw a conspiratorial wink to Sirius, while I just shrugged and pretended to understand "- and… I can't look after you Tonks. I'm old and I'm hagged and some days I really hate myself, and you don't want the…"

That's when I kissed him.

Really, it wasn't my fault. It was an argument I'd heard a million times before in relation to various things – Order missions, drinks down at the pub, helping Sirius with his latest plan to get laid (usually one that would fail long before he even voiced it to the masses) – and I had to shut him up somehow. Vaguely, I wondered if I should feel guilty; he had, after all, been telling me something that he considered to be important – but then I felt his lips against mine and the strange sensation of Remus Lupin tangling his hands in my hair and kissing me back, and…

Somewhere behind us, I could almost hear Sirius gaping, and I could certainly imagine the expletives he was using, ones that were usually reserved for when he'd had a Firewhiskey too many and passed out in the kitchen.

I pulled back finally, feeling a little ashamed. I'd never been a prude, but overwhelming Remus before he'd even had a chance to accept or decline my bold offer of a meal at the local pub wasn't really the nicest of ideas. Why I'd even thought of asking, when this was the first time he'd talked to me, really talked to me, ever was beyond me, but according to Dear Old Professor Sprout, rationality was not a strength of mine.

I felt Remus slip his hand gently into mine, muttering quietly to himself about why he shouldn't be doing this, and I wondered if this was just the beginning. Gently, I raised my hands to his face, waiting for his reaction, and pulled his face towards mine again.

"Remus! Tonks! Why is there glass and custard all over the floor?"

Remus gave me an apologetic smile, and I could almost see the wrinkles at the corners of his mouth folding into his skin.

"I'd guess we better go clean up, then," he said with a laugh. "We don't really want to be the anything to Molly's anger, after all. Sirius will never let us live it down."